“All real children are strange and poetic, I think; but, you see, not many small girls are taught by a man like Mr. Lyddon. Now tell me what happened to you when you were wounded.”
Isabey sighed. “When I’m stronger,” he said. “But now I want to put it all away from me for a little while. I mean to give myself a whole month of peace.”
“The doctors said two months.”
“The doctors always say two months when one month will do. Then I shall be ready to go again. A soldier’s life is not all hardship. War is the game of the gods.” After a moment he added in a perfectly conventional tone: “I hope you hear good news from Captain Tremaine?”
“It’s good news that he’s well,” replied Angela. “I hear from him irregularly. I should have been with him long ago if he could have had me, but he’s out in the far West, where there are no railroads or stages or anything. I believe,” she added, the flush, which had died from her face, returning quickly, “the very people for whom Neville sacrificed everything don’t trust him. It’s because they don’t know him. They only know that he is a Southern man in the Northern Army. I feel so sorry for Neville and so indignant for him that I could weep with grief and anger.”
“It’s also very hard for you,” said Isabey, gently.
“Yes, very, but what I endure is only a trifle compared with what Neville has to suffer. You know he had great ambitions and he’s a fine officer, everyone says that, and now all is forgotten and he has no chance. But I ought not to inflict all of my burdens and vexations upon you. Shall I read to you a little?”
“With pleasure,” answered Isabey.
Angela went to the bookcase and brought back several volumes. “These,” she said with authority, “aren’t the books which you particularly like, but the books which Mr. Lyddon says are soothing. They’re all poetry books. Poetry, you know, calms and makes one forget this workaday world.”
Isabey picked up a volume of “Childe Harold.” “I should like you to read this to me. One likes the old familiar things when he is as weak as I am. When I was in Europe I always carried ‘Childe Harold’ in my pocket and read it among the very scenes which Byron describes. You see, I was very young.”